I write to you out of frustration. I was raised in Great Neck between 1956 and 1978 when my wife (also a lifelong Great Neck resident) and I moved to Roslyn.
My office remains on Great Neck Road so I feel like I’ve never left.
In November of 2012 I contacted the Village of Great Neck Plaza about the parking and traffic situation as a result of the grocery store on Welwyn Road near the Post Office.
I spoke with a Mr. Joseph Diaz. I told him that I called the police many times to complain about the double and triple parking in front of the grocery store and my calls pretty much fell on deaf ears.
This more so now that the 3rd and 6th precincts have been merged. He told me that there have been several complaints about the situation and that I would hear back from his office.
It took almost 6 months but I did get a call from Deputy Mayor Ted Rosen.
We had a lengthy conversation in which he told me that “change was coming” and the problem was being worked on. He even called me back a month later to tell me to be patient.
Well, we are a year later and the only change is that someone put orange traffic cones on the painted island in front of the store to prevent drivers from making U-turns, and quite frankly I’ve seen many people just drive right over those cones!
The situation is exacerbated by a lackadaisical traffic enforcement team who do absolutely nothing to stop people from continuing to park in the traffic lane, often resulting in a backup of cars past the traffic circle to Middle Neck Road. They seem determined to find an expired meter within seconds of the red “expired” sign popping up, but nothing to stop anyone from double parking in front of this busy trafficked area. The Nassau County busses very often are at a standstill because of this as well.
A few weeks ago one of those traffic enforcement employees had his car parked in the painted island, was standing outside his car, and did absolutely nothing to stop several cars from double parking.
When I finally approached him, I asked from my vehicle why he was standing a chatting with someone rather than doing something about the traffic, and only then did he break away from his conversation and start to ask people to move.
The situation is made even worse by the attitude of the drivers who are not in the least bit interested in the fact that traffic is being blocked. They ignore honking horns by simply waving you around their illegally parked vehicles.
I’m not claiming to have a solution other than to post an officer with a ticket book there during working hours and to ticket each and every vehicle that breaks the law, but as Deputy Mayor Rosen said, “they just will pay the fine and do it again the next time!”
Well, if nothing else, it’s good revenue for Great Neck, and scale-up of fines that increases by the number of tickets for the same offense may also work.
I drive through this area at least twice a day.
At mid-day and again between 5-5:30 p.m. It doesn’t seem to matter when, but there are always offenders and never anyone around to see to it that they move along.
What can be done to make this situation better???
Eddie Rabinowitz
Great Neck
